Welcome to my first dragon age story! This is also posted on ao3 under the penname killiansbutt. This will feature some game dialogue and it will follow the story of Dragon Age: Inquisition with some minor alterations for the sake of telling a story. As this is my first leap into Dragon Age, please tell me if you spot any glaring errors, but otherwise please enjoy and let me know what you think! Expect weekly updates!
chapter one: the promise
Cassandra didn't speak any longer on their trek to the forward camp, but her final words were ringing around Ophelia Trevelyan's ears, no more calming than they had been the first time. There will be a trial, I can promise no more. As if Ophelia would be lucky enough to make it to a trial. If the breach didn't kill her, then someone else would. She was a deadwoman walking, and she didn't need a Seeker of Truth to tell her as much.
She conceded easily enough still, letting the warrior woman drag her up the mountain to the smear of crackling green energy in the sky, but in truth, there was never a choice in the matter. She wasn't brazen enough to argue with a Seeker of Truth, nor was she selfish enough to doom the world to whatever was sucking the energy from her limbs with each pulse.
Running wasn't out of the question. Everyone was watching her, waiting to be the one to strike her down when she proved guilty. If she hadn't spent nearly her entire life under the templars' watchful stares, she would shiver from the weight of so many eyes on her back. Think, think . What could she do that wouldn't end in her being another disgraced mage in Thedas' history?
She grit her teeth against the pain in her hand. Maker, she couldn't think when it was sending bolts of agony through her skin with every shiver from the breach overhead. Maybe the dwarf was right, maybe she should have come up with a story. Something better than "I don't know" and "I can't remember" to the many questions her new companions had flung her way since she met them.
The apostaste, Solas, eyed her once more. Did he have questions? The inquisitive look in his eyes didn't bother her, but something in the depths of his gaze made her shiver. She didn't like it, and resolved to not make eye contact with him any longer. It was easier said than done when they were peppering her with questions.
From Varric, she assumed it was equal parts his nosy nature - as anyone would expect from an author like him - and his attempts at breaking the ice. She didn't know what to make of the other two's curiosity.
There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
Maker, were they doing the trial now? "I'm sorry, what?" she asked, baffled.
"If you cannot recall what happened during the conclave, what brought you to it?" Cassandra repeated with a twist of her lips, annoyed at repeating herself.
"The radical members of the Ostwick Circle left when we first heard word of the war, but the majority of us didn't believe it. Seemed a bit too good to be true, didn't it? That the mages were finally making a stand after so many years? I don't even know what started it," she admitted, shrugging. "Not until later when we were attacked by templars."
"Your templars turned on you?" Cassandra asked, disapproval clear in her voice. Ophelia frowned, studying her, unsure of what bit bothered her. The seeker continued, frowning. "What would make them turn their back on their duty then and not earlier?"
Ophelia shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. Was she relieved, or afraid? "Oh, no, not... Outside templars did. They wanted to annul the people in the circle who remained, so they attacked. We fought back - all of us, that is, not just the templars who stayed." She didn't want to go into the bloodbath in Ostwick, she saw it enough in her nightmares without saying it aloud.
Varric chuckled. "You didn't leave when the war first began? You're an odd sort, every mage I've come across seems eager for things to change."
"Things do need to change," Ophelia said in surprise, shooting him a cursory look. "When word of the Conclave came, we all agreed to go. Mage and templar - and some turned on each other along the way. The Ostwick Circle is spread across the Free Marches and Ferelden, and I don't think any of them will come back if asked."
"Would you?" asked Cassandra.
She froze. If there was a moment to take the dwarf's advice and lie, it was now. Nothing painted her like a crazy mage willing to ruin the world than admitting the truth, though with each passing second, her chance of lying dwindled. There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
"I don't know," she settled on, more honest than she intended.
"Oh?" Solas said, the look returning to his eyes. Pity for the woman who didn't know what she wanted, pity for the mage who didn't want to choose freedom.
The mark on her hand sent a shiver through her, like a child reminding her of its attention. She squeezed her hand, gritting her teeth.
What did it matter if she lied? The goal holding her aloft was forever out of reach, the breach would see to that if the people didn't. Everything else seemed… pointless. Her arms wrapped around her midsection, holding something that was no longer there. When would she stop thinking about it? Never , her thoughts whispered.
She ducked her head against the chill. "The circle showed me how to control myself, and it brought me people who understood me, but it took from me and it continued taking every day. So, yes, I don't know. Did the good it bring outweigh the good it took?"
They had no answer for her. The breach was too close for more conversation, and their trek to the first rift was silent, punctured only by the whispers of the red lyrium around them. "Don't listen to anything it says," Varric warned. "It's tricked good - well, smart - It's tricked people before, don't let yourself be one of them."
Cassandra grunted, and Solas inclined his head.
Ophelia didn't respond, but later, amidst the echoes of the fade and the disbelieving huff from Cassandra, she thought Varric's words might have doomed her. The echoes in the fade should have been proof of her redemption - it was her first the Divine called to for her help, it was her voice that intruded upon a scene with whatever person killed them all.
Red lyrium lied, she could see the thought written on their faces long before they reached the rift. She could see her fate in their eyes, and it was not sliding towards freedom.
There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
The thought rattled around in her head as the demon fell. Who would hold a trial? Everyone who could judge her was dead, and the only other people with that power were with her now. They had already decided her guilt.
The look on their faces lingered as the battle halted and the world spun on its axis around her. Flee, run, her thoughts raged, her body taking one faltering step forward before the weight of her body grew too heavy. Someone caught her, and her cheek rested on something soft as someone lifted her.
There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
They took her to a room and they allowed someone to heal her. They murmured above her bed, too quiet for her to detect, but she knew without hearing. Ostwick wasn't a Kirkwall, and it was a tame circle compared to most, but she knew the feel of silent judgment. Knew it as a child, knew it as a mage.
She longed to protest, but she couldn't open her eyes let alone speak.
Her lips quivered with the injustice of it at all.
There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
She didn't want to die. Not from the breach, and not from the people. The thought lingered when her eyes opened one day after the breach closed, the room silent save for her own rattling breathing.
Move , she urged her body. Run. Is this what made the mages run? Is this what made them fight? She hadn't understood it, not until the hangman's noose haunted her dreams. She woke two days after the breach closed, weary and tired, and she rolled out of the bed with a quiet, pained cry. She didn't want to die, she refused to die.
There will be a trial, I can promise no more.
Ophelia would not be here for any trial. The thought drowned out Cassandra's words, and she grit her teeth, forcing herself to her feet. Moonlight was shining through the sole window, and she spotted movement as someone wandered past a torch. She held her breath, waiting for someone to barge inside, waiting for the slice of a sword to cut through the shafts of light.
Nothing.
Ophelia looked once around the cramped room once, stealing a cloak from the cupboard and wincing at the creak. Coins were harder to find, but some lingered on a nearby table, discarded in someone's haste to leave, and she scooped them into her hands, fingers trembling. The mark was silent. Perhaps it knew their time was limited. Perhaps it knew they didn't have much longer.
No time to waste.
Without a second glance, Ophelia stole out a window in the back and fled in the night.
…
...
She lasted a month, something she thought grudgingly from the murky, disgusting cell acting as her current home. For once, the rot of corpses and stench of filth wasn't the thing that kept Ophelia awake. It wasn't even the wisps of conversation she heard from nearby templars as they waited for whoever was acting as their leader, standing watch over her like she would wake from her slumber with the new ability to fight them.
Nor was it her palm, which ached, burning with heat that made the rest of her cold even as she clenched her gloved hand beneath her cheek. Even now, with sweat making her long, dark hair cling to her face, she shivered, and it still wasn't the thing to wake her from a slumber.
It was an explosion, so loud that it rocked her from her unpeaceful slumber and straight into something of a nightmare. She wasn't in her cell anymore, but in the wreckage of the conclave, gravel and bones digging into her knees, blood pooling all around her and yet never touching, and from behind her came a keening, piteous cry. Her hand burned worse than ever, a bright green light that sparked and flashed, dancing across jagged stone and broken bodies and—
Ophelia cried out as the rock ceiling above her head began to crack, first a little, then like a spider web that crept and crawled and grew until large chunks fell like large cracks of thunder, the rush of air extinguishing her lone light source and plunging her into darkness. She gritted her teeth against the overwhelming rush of magic as it once more filled her, the runes etched into the ceiling no longer blocking her connection to the fade.
It was too much magic at once, taking her breath away.
The mark spiked with pain, and she bit her lip hard, trying to draw breath and force down her cry.
She climbed to her feet, shaking out her hair and rolling her shoulders, exhaling slowly as she rebalanced herself. She cupped her palms, focusing, and a bulb of bright light appeared, hovering above her hands and she flicked her fingers to release it. The light hovered just above her head, her prison filling with light.
The templars kept it dark, a lone torch outside her cell to offer light to the jailers and not the prisoner, as though the runes that locked away her magic would somehow stop working. With their distrust of all things magic and the belief that anything so was against the Maker's will - as though mages somehow weren't given their gifts from Him - she wasn't surprised.
She smiled. The motion was foreign after weeks of being hunted like an animal, and days of being captured, but freedom was so close.
No longer was she in chains. No longer was this cell her home.
She strode to the bars, lifting a sole hand up and flinging it out. The streak of light pulsed and grew, sparking with power, and shot forward into the bars of her prison. The bars fought, but failed, crashing against the opposite wall with a bang like a cannon. Ophelia didn't waste time, striding out of the cell, only hesitating a fraction at the base of a long staircase leading up. No clank and creak of armor running towards her. No shouts of templars coming to cut off her escape.
How could they not, with the ruckus she made?
She halted as another thought occurred. Was this not a trick? They had been watching her for days, looking for some sign of her power, not at all convinced that being a mage was the only thing guaranteeing her survival since the Conclave's disastrous end. Waiting, no doubt, for proof to deliver her to the gallows and gain their reward. Correct, really, if they had thought to remove the gloves that hid the mark on her palm, one that was both gift and curse. Thinking of the garish cut on her palm brought pain, but none so much as the gut-wrenching knowledge of what her mark represented to the people.
Murderer.
Herald of Andraste.
It swung by day, as if people weren't sure what to do as she stumbled around the Hinterlands these last few weeks. One moment she closes a rift in the dead of night. Another, she lays a trap at the templar and mage encampment before scurrying away, fearful of what meddling could do. Some days, she did nothing, wandering from one rift to the next, looking over her shoulder.
The Inquisition didn't help matters. They were so… earnest , trying in vain to halt the rising tides, unaware of the imminent tsunami. On mornings when she awoke with only a few moments of sleep and cold air nipping at her cheeks, she regretted leaving them behind after closing the breach.
Somewhat closing the breach, as it turned out. She could see it in the sky above their heads, still there but not quite gone, though she hadn't paused to think about that on her flight from Haven in the dead of night.
Fleeing from the scene probably didn't help their debate on whether she was a villain or a hero, she realized with hindsight. Staying behind had seemed like a long walk to her own death, and Ophelia didn't want to wait around for the noose. No, she wanted the comfort of her circle back and her friends among them. She wanted this war over.
She wanted- Well, it didn't matter what she wanted and it didn't matter what they thought of her either. Nothing changed the fact that her entire life - her entire fate, really, if one believed in that sort of thing - would never be the same now that she had this damn thing. The weight of the world on her shoulders - or hand, as it was.
It flared in protest. Sometimes she could mistake it for a living, breathing thing, but nine months spent with something far more alive removed the notion as quick as it appeared. This? This was a parasite.
She hesitated, just briefly, but it was long enough for her to sense something… wrong. The air felt lighter than ever, not just from being free, but as though a blanket had been ripped off from the entire building itself, bringing it with fresh air and a terrible chill.
The fade, she thought bleakly. It hadn't occurred to her that whatever cracked the ceiling wasn't just dumb luck and shitty architect - the explosion she had thought a figment of her nightmares was, quite clearly, an epic battle waging above her head.
Perhaps she was safer in her cell. They certainly seemed too afraid to touch her, but how long?
No. Ophelia couldn't - wouldn't - stand around and wait for them to put her back. She hitched up the hem of her tattered robe with both hands, eyes narrowed on the staircase winding up and up into an unknown darkness. Whatever was up there would be safer than whatever was down here.
...
...
She burst through the doors at the top of the stairs, and stopped, mouth agape. Her heartbeat in her ears had drowned out the sounds of fighting, but there was no mistaking the carnage around her. Bodies strewn across the floor. Templar, and some other less impressive uniform dotted with so much blood she could no longer see the insignia. Sickness welled up in her, swallowed back with haste.
No one deserved this.
Is this the Maker's plan? If so, she didn't see the goal, or the end point.
Ophelia swallowed, throat dry, and crept forward, footsteps quieter, scanning around the hall. It was empty, for the moment, and that was more startling than the battle waged on the other side of the stone. Doors lined the wall every few feet, but none were grand enough to be an exit.
She crept down the hallway, wincing when her bare feet brushed over fresh blood or loose rumble, shivering when the fighting became louder, and shivering more when the silence grew dense like a fog. Of all her plans, Ophelia thought this was her least thought out one. Stupid, really, to flee without even a weapon and no knowledge of where to go. She had her magic, but truly it was luck that had kept her alive this far and not any amount of skill with fighting. Fear was prompting her forward, but would fear stay their hand if she came across them?
Her eyes lingered on the abandoned weapons, but most were too large or clenched between the fists of a dead person. Was she desperate enough to steal from the dead?
Maybe, she thought, but relief washed over her when she spotted an abandoned dirk on the ground. It wasn't the same as a staff, nor did she feel as brave, but she no longer jumped at the smallest of sounds.
She did miss the exit, only noticing when she turned a familiar corner and spotted the same soldier holding a sword that she had spotted earlier. Backtracking, she found an entrance way with two large, imposing oak doors. One led to freedom, one led to death, and she was stuck figuring out which one. There were loud screams in the other room, half pain and half despair.
That, then, would be the one she would avoid.
She failed nary a second later.
The large doors flung open, and a woman with dark skin and ice magic swirling around her finger tips held it open with her body. Others followed her out, and she shot shards of ice deeper into the room, over the shoulders of those retreating. The hall was filled with people in various stages of injury, their faces ashy and worried. She recognized none, not until a warrior with short hair and a grimace on her face stepped out, grimacing as she stepped over people with the same insignia on their chest that she wore on her own.
Cassandra. Then the fighting was the Inquisition, she realized with dawning horror, looking over the bodies on the ground and the filling hallway. Cassandra didn't notice, trading places with the woman at the door.
No one paid Ophelia any mind, as if it wasn't unusual for someone looking ragged like her to stand there.
No doubt because half of them looked ready to fall over. Wounded soldiers were strewn over shoulders, and dragged bodily away from the fighting. Ophelia could no longer see in the room, not unless she stretched on her toes.
"My dear, if you are fighting with us, you would be better suited in the room. If you are leaving, you might try moving," the woman said, catching sight of Ophelia and correctly assuming she wasn't part of them. Her face betrayed nothing, but Ophelia hadn't been on the run this long to miss the shift in her stance. No longer was her body angled to fling spells at the door, but tilted, as if one wrong move on Ophelia's part would end with an ice spike in her throat.
"What?" she asked, voice hoarse. "Where are we?"
The woman looked less and less impressed. "I see," was all she said, as if Ophelia had answered an unspoken question and been found lacking.
Ophelia couldn't respond, for the tide of people was becoming smaller and smaller, and she could see into the room now. Whatever it was before, there was nothing left, broken by the battle inside of it. Worst of all was the green rift in the center of the room, large and imposing, spewing demons into the slowly drooping blades of fighters.
She flinched at a pained screech.
Rifts were no stranger to her, the kin of it twisting in her palm as if it longing to reach it. She had made it her mission to close them, but she had never done so in front of witnesses. She didn't dream of betraying who or what she was, not when so many people were there to witness it. The Inquisition to witness it.
This mark had changed her fate. No longer was she an apostate who would be flung into a circle if caught, now she was an apostate who held a scar to match the one in the sky, the same thing that had killed the divine and steadily sent Thedas on a path of destruction.
If she was caught, she would die.
What did it matter to her if these people died instead?
"Andraste's tit," she swore. The woman didn't blink, and her posture didn't change, but something like amusement twinkled in her eyes for a split second. Ophelia didn't stay to see what became of that twinkle, she marched into the room. She was smaller than most of the other soldiers, and tinier than everyone save several dwarves dotted among the people, and she slid around them all.
"SERA! STOP THROWING BEES!" was her only warning to duck before a buzzing jar of enraged insects flew through the space her head had been and smashed into a demon's face across the way. She winced as the creatures buzzed, and the demon flailed, but better for the bees to fight it than Ophelia and her dirk.
Her dirk against a hall filling with demons.
Maker, what was she thinking? Her feet froze in place, unable to find a place to move that didn't put a demon directly into her path. Connecting with the rift would bring them all down on her head, but if she didn't close, they would become overrun anyway.
"Commander, what do we do?" The panicked soldier took the words out of her mouth and she whirled around, looking in the sea of bodies for the source. The sound of weapon on weapon made it difficult to hear, the noises echoing in her ears. To her left, a man fell to a demon's swipe, screaming as he did. She flinched away, backing into someone else who quickly nudged her away with confusion on his tattoed face. He, too, was lost among the din.
A wraith floated her way, halted by an elf with a bow and plaidweave leggings for a moment before the elf was sent flying from a well-placed hit. Ophelia shot forward, shoving the dirk into the wraiths back before it could do more harm. An arrow smacked it in the face and the two prong attack made it dissipate in a flash of light, returning to the fade.
"Good hit, wasn't it?" the elf woman said with a faint grin, an angry bruise on the side of her face. She flipped away before Ophelia could respond.
"Watch the left! Buy them time to leave!" A man ordered, his voice cutting through the air and repeated by soldiers as it went. It was him, the man she remembered from her horrid trek to the breach, recalling his blonde hair and weary eyes, the hoarseness of his voice from the hours fighting.
The Commander would know what to do. Maker, if she could get to him, he could get her to the rift. They could end this.
Ophelia couldn't even see the door. A woman beside her fell heavily, not a sound escaping her, but her eyes staring unseeing into the ceiling. Oh, Maker.
The shade's attention moved to her, and Ophelia shrieked, slashing wildly with the dirk. Its hand caught her wrist, sharpened claws digging into her skin through her gloves. The dirk clattered from her hand, and she winced as it dragged her away, the other hand reaching for her throat. She flailed, and her foot caught it, but she might have kicked a wall for all it did. Its claws dug into her neck, and she couldn't breathe. Panicked, she kicked again and her free hand caught the wrist holding her throat.
Come on, she thought, gritting her teeth. Her mana was a trickle, she hadn't realized how low it was until that moment, but she pushed it for that final bit. Lightning crackled from her palms, faint at first, and then it crackled from her skin and sent a shockwave through the shade. It dropped her, hissing, and the shockwaves bounced from it to the demon nearest it. Soldiers took advantage of the momentary lull.
She collided with the floor with a yelp, shaking the tingle from her fingers. The shade reached again, and she shot a hand out, intending to blast it. A spark from her palm slammed into it, and then nothing.
She stared, horrified, and the shade reared back, not wounded enough to fade. What was she thinking? What a fool! Ophelia scuttled back, back hitting something hard, trying to dig into herself for more mana, something that could end this.
Her eyes lifted. The rift was close. She could just… Maker, let her close this before she died. She ripped her glove off with her teeth, shoving her trembling hand into the air. The mark, for a moment dim, flared to life with a hum of power, colliding with the rift.
The fighting halted for all of a second, the sounds of it fading away to nothing, her attention only on the rift and the way it fought her. She struggled to take in another breath, hissing at the way her hand shook. The mark burned, like someone was shoving a burning rod into her hand.
The shade was creeping closer, and she pushed another burst of energy into the mark, willing the rift closed. Let it close before she died. Let her do something right.
A sword swiped through the shade in the same moment the rift closed with a snap. The shade shrieked, the sound of it echoed by its brethren who were stunned by the rift's abrupt closure and the soldiers made quick, silent work of them.
She fell back once more against the hard wall, hand dropping to her chest as she let out a rattling breath. The days of captivity were catching up to her, unable to process the silence of the room. She sucked in a breath, and then coughed violently as she failed to catch her breath.
The wall behind her moved, and she fell back onto the ground.
Not a wall, as it turned out, but the armor of someone staring down at her with bemusement. The weeks hadn't treated the Commander of the Inquisition well. Dark smudges beneath his honey colored eyes and a cut bleeding from his cheek profusely - and still the sight of a familiar face above her head brought a wave of relief through her.
The Inquisition was here, they wouldn't let her die. They, at least, would let her talk, if only the cacophony in the room would halt enough for her to speak.
"Hello," she croaked, struggling to draw breath, panic building when she couldn't draw in more. His eyes grew concerned, eyes flickering over her for a moment before catching sight of her throat and then lifting his head. His lips moved, but she didn't catch what it was through the ringing in her ears.
Hands reached for her, brushing over her bruised throat and soothing the ache there. She blinked once, but her eyes grew too heavy to hold open and she slumped back to the ground, letting the warmth of healing magic wash over her.